Pyrotechnic circuit breakers are widely used for disabling an electric circuit, for instance in response to abnormal conditions of use.
Conventional pyrotechnic circuit breakers use a bus bar acting as a conducting element, which can be cut or broken along its transverse direction into two distinct parts by a piston in order to break open the circuit by stopping the electric conduction between the two parts of the bus bar. In the present text, we will refer to the cutting of the bus bar by the piston, to designate either its cutting or its breaking by the piston. Documents US 2010/218659 and US 2013/056344 disclose such known pyrotechnic circuit breakers.
In such pyrotechnic circuit breakers, a recurring issue resides in the assembly of the bus bar, which is usually integrated during the assembly of the pyrotechnic circuit breakers, which are provided as a whole together with their associated bus bar by overmoulding or bolting components around the bus bar.
Furthermore, an additional recurring issue resides in the compatibility of the body of the circuit breaker with various models of bus bar. Conventional circuit breakers are indeed provided with specific bus bar, thereby preventing their use with bus bars that have distinct dimensions such as thickness and width.